I have been invited to talk at this year’s food blogger’s conference in London in July. As excited as I am about the opportunity, I am also terrified of public speaking and thus wondering how I will actually present my thoughts in a comprehensive and meaningful manner to those wanting to hear about branding for bloggers… Preparation is everything, so I will use the next few weeks to go through salient points of my presentation to ‘practice’ in writing.

To introduce the subject, I’d like to clarify my understanding of the word BRANDING. Ever since the word entered the general marketing and design chatter more than a decede ago, I now often come across it as being misused to describe the brand identity of a business or organisation or be interchanged with the term LOGO.

A logo is a visual mark or identifier for a product or service.

An identity, or brand identity, combines the logo, the colours, the photography style, the tone of voice, the sound, smell and anything else sensory that represents the product and brand.

A brand however is more intangible, more touchy-feely, it’s the gut feeling a person has about a product or service. It creates an emotion of what the company or product stands for and what it means to us if we associate ourselves with it.

“Products are made in the factory, but brands are created in the mind” Walter Landor

I tried to visualise the key words foodie style… it’s never perfect but I hope it helps to quickly grasp the concept.

Aristotle – “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.”

So, in cup cake land, a logo may be a decorative identifier of the specific flavour. The colours, packaging and shape are all part of the brand identity. The brand will only come to life, however, once a customer has taken a bite. The flavour, texture and how it was digested are just as important if not more so than all the triggers that made someone buy and try this particular cake instead of another.

Where branding becomes really powerful though is when you also take into consideration the ambience in which the cake was selected and eaten, the interaction with the seller, the buying experience as a whole and of course the ‘value for money’ feedback that follows.

It really is an opportunity for businesses to make a difference by optimising their customers’ brand experience and making sure they don’t leave any bad tastes in their client’s mouth.